2024 was an eventful and successful year for us at Miðeind. The company thrived, counting 16 employees by year's end, and seeing momentum growing steadily.

There were many highlights. First, Miðeind received the Ský IT-awards in February, specifically the "honorary award for outstanding contribution to information technology in Iceland". We are naturally very touched by this recognition, both for our own sake and even more so for the cause of the Icelandic language.

Speaking of the cause, we launched the Málstaður platform — our crown jewel — in September, with a well-attended and enjoyable launch party at the company's newly expanded office (Málstaður literally translates to "cause" but can also be viewed as a compound meaning "a place for language"). Málstaður brings together Miðeind's main language technology solutions in one interconnected place. Most of Málstaður's features can be used free of charge, while a subscription unlocks the platform's full functionality. This includes proofreading and language critique ("Málfríður"), speech-to-text and subtitle generation ("Hreimur"), question answering ("Svarkur"), and synonym lookup. Málstaður will continue to grow and expand in the new year.

I mentioned synonym lookup, which is the newest addition to Málstaður. The team at Miðeind used clever automated methods, based on artificial intelligence and open data (including the Dictionary of Contemporary Icelandic from the Árni Magnússon Institute), to create a new thesaurus for Icelandic. The dictionary is free and accessible to all — and helps the user write more varied, colorful, diverse, vibrant, multifaceted, intricate, and rich texts (you see what I did there).

In May, we joined Lilja Alfreðsdóttir, then Minister of Culture and Business Affairs, on visits to technology companies and institutions on the U.S. West Coast. These included OpenAI, Anthropic, Allen Institute for AI, Google, and Microsoft. The topic of discussion was the status of smaller languages and cultural regions in the age of artificial intelligence. The meetings were productive, and served to open communication channels, and strengthen connections with key figures in the sector.

Shortly after our meetings with OpenAI concluded, the company introduced the AI language model GPT-4o, which showed significant progress in Icelandic compared to its predecessor GPT-4 Turbo. In Miðeind's benchmark test, which evaluates language models' ability to inflect Icelandic noun phrases, GPT-4o correctly solves 66% of examples, while GPT-4 Turbo solved 57% (and GPT-4 only 22%). 

To monitor the capabilities of major AI models in Icelandic, Miðeind's team created a leaderboard on the HuggingFace platform, where LLM performance in grammar, factual knowledge, and reasoning ability in Icelandic can be viewed. Most of these benchmark tests are developed in-house at Miðeind. 

In September, OpenAI convened a special symposium in New York, alongside the United Nations General Assembly, addressing the aforementioned cause of smaller languages. Miðeind had representatives at the symposium and presented a white paper on challenges and solutions in light of Iceland's experience, which we wrote in close collaboration with Almannarómur and the Ministry of Culture and Business Affairs following encouragement from OpenAI.

The aforementioned experience in Iceland has indeed spread further afield, leading to Linda Heimisdóttir, CEO, traveling to Ireland in April to meet with representatives of the Irish/Gaelic language region to share knowledge and strengthen connections. Linda also participated in discussions of the Nordic-Baltic Council on AI preparedness in Copenhagen in September. Linda is an accomplished and sought-after speaker, and as evidence of this, her TEDx presentation on artificial intelligence and smaller languages received a special designation ("Editors' Pick") from TED in May, garnering nearly 30,000 views to date.

International communications went both ways. In March, we received a particularly enjoyable visit to our office from spouses Anya Schiffrin and Joseph Stiglitz for discussion and exchange of views. Joseph is a Nobel laureate in economics and a well-known author and commentator in that field, while Anya heads the Technology, Media, and Communications department at Columbia University. Topics of discussion included the development and impact of artificial intelligence, media and social media, the status of smaller languages, and Iceland's opportunities and challenges.

Artificial intelligence that is fluent in Icelandic opens up various new possibilities, including in the media industry. A new solution that Miðeind has rolled out in collaboration with RÚV (the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service) is an example of this. Using Miðeind’s service, RÚV's editorial staff can retrieve an article from the editorial system and instantly transform it into a simplified language version, which is then reviewed before publication on RÚV's website. This gives a larger group of people the opportunity to follow news and public discourse, improving quality of life and supporting democracy and human rights.

The chatbot and question-answering tool Svarkur was well received and went to work answering user questions for companies and public entities, including Veitur and various municipalities. Málfríður thoroughly refined texts and showed significant improvement throughout the year; our machine translation system worked diligently on translating European regulations for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs' Translation Centre, and Hreimur automatically generated subtitles for television programs, to name a few examples of how our products were put to good use. (And let us not forget our ever popular Netskrafl, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in the new year and continues to bring joy to thousands of regular users.)

We think we can safely predict another exciting upcoming year at Miðeind, as there is much in the pipeline and the world of language technology and artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving. I look forward to tackling the challenges and seizing opportunities with our excellent team, which grows more experienced and stronger with each passing year.

Happy New Year!